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In Attorney General v Messi the Employment Appeal Tribunal has issued a restriction of proceedings order against an individual who brought a large number of unsuccessful employment tribunal claims against various employers. It stopped short of restricting Messi from acting as a representative for others in the employment tribunals (ET) or being a McKenzie friend (a lay person assisting another to bring a claim), holding that it had no jurisdiction to make that order.
Ms Messi had issued more than 50 ET claims. She made repeated applications for interim relief, whistleblowing detriment, discrimination and unpaid wages. The claims were struck out as having no reasonable prospects of success or dismissed following non-attendance in the tribunal or were withdrawn.
The Attorney General applied for a Restriction of Proceedings Order (RPO) against Messi under section 33 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996. This order allows the EAT to impose an order where a person has 'habitually and persistently and without any reasonable ground instituted... vexatious proceedings... or made vexatious applications'.
The EAT found that Ms Messi's conduct had caused substantial prejudice to multiple respondents but also to the tribunal and court system as a whole which has limited resources.
Ms Messi argued that the RPO would make her unemployable but the EAT rejected this argument. (Any prospective employer Googling her name would have been able to discover the pattern of conduct). The purpose of the order was not to prevent her from bringing genuine claims but to act as a 'judicial filter' so that any future claims would be examined from the outset by an ET Judge. Permission to proceed would be granted in the usual way if she presented a meritorious claim.
This judgment will be welcomed by employers who have dealt with vexatious and abusive claims. Employment tribunals are very reluctant to strike out claims concerning discrimination (which includes whistleblowing) without first hearing evidence. This gives vexatious litigants an advantage. We know that in practice there are claimants out there who bring repeat claims with the objective of pushing an employer into financial settlement purely on the basis of nuisance. It seems a shame that it took more than 50 vexatious applications to put a stop to Ms Messi's conduct.
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